xcavator.net is a visual search portal targeting the stock photography industry. Visual search allows a user to look for similar images within databases containing millions of images based on color and key features. “The visual search capabilities, combined with keyword filtering, create an unbeatable intuitive experience for the user browsing Photovault’s inventory”, said Vern Krutein, President of Photovault.

CogniSign Press Release

CogniSign Launches xcavator.net™ Beta – A Portal Providing Visual Search of Stock Photography

Breakthrough Color and Image Search Technology Enables Stock Photo Buyers To Quickly Find The Exact Photo They Need

SAN FRANCISCO, May 23, 2007 – CogniSign, a leader in image search technology, launched the Beta release of its new xcavator.netTM visual search portal targeting the stock photography industry. The announcement was made to the industry at the Photo Marketing Association’s DIMA forum in Las Vegas. The company will also be presenting the xcavator.net portal at the upcoming i3A (International Imaging Industry Association) Conference, to be held in Denver in early June.

The Beta is open to the public at www.xcavator.net . A video introduction is available to help new users get the most out of the site.

xcavator.net has extremely fast, natural and intuitive interactive photo search, providing buyers of stock photography with a fast, fun, and immersive browsing experience based on both visual content and keywords. The key to the visual search capabilities is the portal’s color and image search engines, powered by the awardwinning CogniSign Intelligent Image Recognition Technology. Visual search allows a user to look for similar images within databases containing millions of images - just like a human can look at a few dozen manually – based on color, key features and their spatial relationships and proximity, etc.

The portal’s Beta launch has over 300,000 images of stock photo inventory from Photovault, a company also based in San Francisco. Inventory can be easily provided to the portal from any stock photo company’s system, using automated data feeds of thumbnail images with associated keywords and other metadata.

Vern Krutein, President of Photovault, strongly believes the portal will help him sell more stock photography and acquire new customers. “The visual search capabilities, combined with keyword filtering, create an unbeatable intuitive experience for the user browsing Photovault’s inventory”, said Mr. Krutein. I strongly believe it will give me a competitive advantage by giving buyers faster and more pertinent returns on their searches”.

Stock photo inventory from additional companies will be added to the portal at the conclusion of the Beta. This will present unprecedented opportunities for buyers to quickly find exactly what they are looking for, and for sellers to market their inventory in a much more efficient manner. Search features on stock photography company websites have historically relied only on keywords and other metadata.

This has created the need for management to carefully monitor and maintain this information, a difficult and time consuming task.

“With both visual search technology and keyword search deployed at our portal, we completely redesigned the stock photo browsing and selection experience”, said Bryan Calkins, CEO of CogniSign. “Visual search creates a second and more powerful search query language, taking some of the pressure off keywords and metadata. They are still extremely important, but do not need to be as extensive or as exacting. For example, subject matter keywords can be more finite and color keywords can be eliminated”.

CogniSign Forms Advisory Board
Separately, CogniSign has formed an Advisory Board, and is pleased to announce its first two members. Doug Rowan, former CEO of Corbis Images, brings many years of stock photography industry experience to the company, and is currently CEO of ZoomAlbum, a company dedicated to deploying innovative technology to make photo printing and sharing easier for the typical consumer. John Marcom, former Senior Vice President of Yahoo!’s International Operations, brings extensive print and online publishing, search, and advertising expertise to the company. Previously, he was President of the Americas for the Financial Times unit of Pearson PLC, and SVP of Media Strategies and Worldwide Sales for Atom Entertainment Inc. (acquired by Viacom in 2006); he began his business career with Time Inc.

About CogniSign
CogniSign is a technology company providing visual search product solutions based on its award-winning Intelligent Image Recognition Technology (patents pending).

CogniSign LLC is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit http://www.cognisign.com . For immediate assistance, please email Celia Cratch at [email protected].

About Photovault
Photovault is a stock photo company also based in San Francisco that specializes in managed rights photography. The company’s website at http://www.photovault.com has more than 300,000 high quality stock photos in its inventory. For immediate assistance, please call (415) 552-9682 or send an email to [email protected].

NOTE: CogniSign, the CogniSign logo, xcavator, xcavator.net, and Intelligent Image Recognition Technology are trademarks of CogniSign LLC. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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